Story by Tom DeFalco & Scott Lobdell
Pencils by Brett Booth
Inks by Norm Rapmund, Sal Regla, Marlo Alquiza and John Livesay
The Solicitation
• "THE CULLING" begins here!• It's the TEEN TITANS vs. THE LEGION LOST one mile beneath the Antarctic in the chamber of horrors known as the Crucible!• Continued in this month's SUPERBOY #9, LEGION LOST #9 and TEEN TITANS #9!
Preview
The Comic
The premise of The Culling, which has been building this air of "mystery" since the new 52 started, centers around the idea of throwing a bunch of teenage meta-humans in a room, letting them kill each other until one is left, and that one gets to be a part of the big villain's crew. While you collect the nasty brutes, some of them get to live in the area where they will be battling.
See also Hunger Games or Battle Royale with a teenage superhero twist.
I remember a time I praised Teen Titans because they got teenage heroes to team up without using too much of the heroes fighting heroes motif that gets spread pretty thin around superhero stories. Take a guess what direction the story takes in this issue to get the team to be able to team up at the end?
At the end, we get to see some of Harvest's team, the big bad villains who have won previous rounds of The Culling to get a spot as a side kick. In it includes the two "bosses" that Superboy had over in his book within the first couple of issues.
I get a strange sense of deja vu that I had with Red Lanterns. The story had a lot of promise at first and was good, but the idea that it was leading to this just doesn't pay off for me. The story seems like a cliched rip off. The costumes for the heroes are like Tron inspired rip offs. There isn't much here for me that seems to be original.
This story, it just isn't for me. And I've been making cuts to what comics I pick up from here on out. And Teen Titans have been falling off my radar of good books to look forward to each month. I will pick up issue #9 to see how this story ends. If it is predictable and not entertaining, I'm done.
The Art
We get series regular Brett Booth on this issue, which explains why he was gone for issue #8. But this whole comic is nothing but a pose-a-thon. Seriously, every character seems to get half a page to themselves just to flex their powers/muscle/weirdly contorted hips (check out the one of Artemis, which is just wonky).
Essentially, what you get on the cover is what you get on the inside. Will a hell-colored background and overtones.
The Cover
Minus the lack of reds that the interior uses, this is exactly what you get on the inside of the book. Who is that guy in the background in the bottom half of the cover? I don't know. I think it is supposed to be our big bad, but I can't tell too clearly.
Grades
Words: 2/10
Pictures: 3/10
Recommend: Negative. The only thing that The Culling will be doing will be shedding readers.
Buy Next Issue: I'm really tempted to say no, but I want to see how this will supposedly end. More than likely it will be a non-ending. But then again, it might be my ending to the book.
Previous Issues
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